Opinion: Columnists

Pomerance: Sustainability and Resilience - Words or Action?

In a recent presentation, the City of Boulder's planning director identified sustainability and resilience as two concepts critical for defining Boulder's future. But is there a real commitment to take the necessary actions? I suspect that the full implications of these concepts will be ignored, and that our future will be business as usual — more and more growth and development without any requirement to maintain the qualities that make Boulder great.

The Brundtland Commission of the United Nations defined sustainability well: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It's obvious that "meeting the needs of the present" cannot mean continually allowing conditions to deteriorate. But that is just what we are doing.

For example, continuing to allow more residential development without adequate funding to provide libraries, parks, recreation centers, and schools is not sustainable. But our development impact fees are simply inadequate to keep up, and for no good reason. Continuing to add more jobs than resident workers, as with Boulder Junction and other commercial development in east Boulder, both pushes up housing prices and leads to increasing in-commuting and the resulting worsening of traffic jams. Neither is consistent with a goal of sustainability. Traffic is getting ridiculous; for example, a week ago Friday the evening rush hour was bumper to bumper from Boulder all the way to Golden.

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Resilience is "the ability of a system to return to its original state after being disturbed." If a system becomes overloaded or has no redundancy, then a small perturbation can cause major disruptions, because there is no slack and there are no alternatives. Right now Boulder has a very reliable water supply simply because we have multiple sources and excess water rights to deal with dry periods. But continuing to add people, both residents and workers, and annexing more land, like the Planning Reserve, will soon put us in the position where any multi-year drought will lead to severe watering restrictions, potentially killing off the trees and landscaping that make Boulder so attractive. And our transportation network has no more excess capacity; it becomes tied up when even one major arterial requires work.

Boulder County is pursuing an important project relative to making transportation more sustainable. They have just completed an analysis of the potential benefits and costs of countywide EcoPasses for all residents and employees. The study demonstrates that very significant increases in transit ridership could result for very little additional cost. (It would be even cheaper if RTD could be persuaded to base its pricing on the actual costs.) The study's price elasticity analysis implies that much more dramatic increases in ridership could occur if we started charging people for driving, either by charging for parking or using a license plate recognition system to, in effect, charge tolls, as London does. Combine this with a requirement that new commercial development be net-zero regarding transportation impacts, and we would really improve both sustainability and resilience. But so far there is no real consideration of such approaches.

Much of our open space serves as habitat for local species. This is another area where not compromising is critical for future generations. It's easy for people to think that their individual impact or that of their pet is small, and therefore not of concern. But it is the cumulative impact that drives animals and birds away and destroys habitat. Our sustainability plans must take this into account, and we all will need to do our part, just as we do with conserving energy.

We are at the end game for Boulder. The big question is whether we will continue to add more commercial, office and residential development without any quality-of-life standards that we are committed to maintaining. If we want to keep Boulder a desirable place to live, then we will need to create comprehensive legally binding standards so that what we do or allow today will not compromise our future and the qualities that we love so much about our city. These standards need to go to a vote of the citizens, so that future councils cannot alter our path at their whim. And we should not be forced to choose between paying higher taxes, to fund what the new development should have paid for, or suffer a lower quality of life because service levels are degraded.

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